Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “I watched him. That’s why I always take a seat in a corner—”

  “Well, and what did the thief do?” said Mickey.

  “The burglar worried. And he watched the clock. And when he got up to go—”

  “We got up,” Mickey hurried, “and we followed him to the street, and there we watched him.”

  “I watched him,” said the Inspector. “You turned your back.”

  So the Inspector had noticed; Mickey was ashamed. “Well,” he said.

  “That man worried some more, but he hung about in the light looking down the Bowery, and by and by when the wagon appeared—”

  The Inspector paused, and Mickey, dodging about from sidewalk to gutter as people cut in between them, was all impatience.

  “What did the burglar do then?”

  “Do you remember that one of the few clues we had in this case was an old express wagon, which was pretty well described? I suppose you didn’t?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Mickey, “but I tried to forget it, and I guess I did. I hate clues.”

  The Inspector marched on solemnly, till he was ready, then he proceeded. “That wagon drove up and down before the house till the burglar came out of the front door and openly beckoned to the driver. Then he deliberately put the swag in, sent off the driver and went back into the house. He had left off his hat and coat, so as to make witnesses believe he lived or worked there. No one saw him come out. A very neat trick, very neat.”

  “Not as neat as the burglar who got a cop on post to help him carry out his stuff to a wagon,” Mickey observed. “But go on, Inspector.”

  “There is no more. I saw the wagon, and I saw that the burglar saw the wagon. And then he tried to sign to the driver of the wagon and—”

  “You signed to the cop on post.”

  “Exactly.”

  They were approaching police headquarters. Silently, side by side, they walked, the Inspector and the boy, and the boy was expected to say something. But he was silent till they had entered the building, and passed down the long hall to the detective bureau. There the Inspector paused.

  “I suppose you want me to tell the gang?” Mickey asked, meaning the other reporters.

  “That, Mr. Sweeney, I will leave to you.”

  “I’ll tell ’em,” said Mickey, and he did. He told it all just as he saw it, including his “interview” with the Inspector. All he left out was Sherlock Holmes. That was personal. But he made a good story of it, so good that the morning newspaper men, after they had it all down, asked Mickey, an evening newspaper reporter, why he didn’t keep it till the next day and give it out to the evening papers.

  “Well, I’ll tell you why,” Mickey answered. “I somehow don’t like that story. I’d kind o’ hate to write it myself and I’d kind o’ hate to read it in my pape’.”

  “But why not? You saw it happen, and it’s a darn good tale.”

  “Yes,” said the boy. “I saw it happen, and it’s a good story just as it stands, but, say: Foley says the fine art of detective work is suspicioning a thing, and I’ve sure got that fine art down fine on this case. I’m going to look for some clues to see if I can’t find out how Foley really solved that silver burglary.”

  For some six weeks thereafter, the other reporters, to badger Mickey as he had badgered the Inspector, asked him daily his own favorite question:

  “Ain’t got no clue to that silver burglars, I suppose?”

  “Not yet,” Mickey answered evenly, but I’ll get it all right.”

  The question became a standing joke, and one day when at cards, Mickey was slow to play, a fellow prodded him with “Ain’t got no clue—”

  “Yes,” said Mickey, “I’ve got it.”

  They played the hand out, then sat back to hear the story. And this is Mickey’s story:

  “Yaller Sal, a coon gal in Chinatown, walked up to Dunlap, the ward-man of the Mott Street station, one evening, and she says to him, ‘Say, Sam,’ she says, ‘you ain’t noticed, has you, how as that black nigger gal Sadie Carroll’s a-wearin’ jewels these days?’ And Dunlap says, ‘Thanks.’ So he goes up into Sadie Carroll’s room and he opens her trunk and there’s some of the silver; all that wasn’t pawned. He waits around till Sadie comes home and he pinches her. Then he waits around till her feller comes home and he pinches him, and he’s the burglar that used to hang his jewels on Yaller Sal and had lately been hangin’ ’em on Sadie Carroll.”

  Mickey, thinking of the Inspector’s pauses, paused.

  “Go on,” said a reporter.

  “That’s all,” said Mickey. “Dunlap locked up the burglar and his girl; took their pawn tickets to collect the stuff they had pawned, and when he had his case complete, turned it all over to the Inspector.”

  Mickey rested till the others had protested that they couldn’t see where the wagon and the scene at the Tiger Restaurant came in.

  “Oh,” said Mickey, “the Inspector, having the burglar, had to have a story, didn’t he? Well, he has been reading Sherlock Holmes, so he told the coon burglar that if he would get the same wagon that he used in the burglary, put the stuff in it and would have it driven up past the Tiger at 8.17—I think it was about 8.17—the police would send him away for straight burglary. Otherwise they would land him for second offence. Of course, the coon accepted the offer and played the game out.”

  “But who for?”

  “Dr. Watson.”

  “Dr. Watson!” they exclaimed. “Who’s Dr. Watson?”

  “Me,” said Mickey, and as he saw they saw the point, he rubbed it in. “You remember how Sherlock Holmes had a fellow around with him to ask him how he done what he did? Well, Foley had to have one, so he elected me.”

  The reporters all sat there thinking this story in. It interested them. It threw a lot of light all around them. But at last their thoughts came back to Mickey, and one of them asked the question they all wished to ask:

  “Well, Mick, how did you find that all out? You’re no Dr. Watson; you’re a pretty good Sherlock Holmes yourself. How did you do it?”

  “Me?” said Mickey. “Why, just like the detectives do it. I asked the coon burglar. I waited till he was all safe and sentenced, so he wouldn’t be scared of the police doubling his time, then I asked him how it all happened, and he told me; him and Yaller Sal and Dunlap, who was just a little sore at the way the Inspector took the whole credit to himself the way he did.”

  “Yes, but, Mr. Holmes,” one of the reporters persisted, “what made you suspect—”

  “Watson,” said Mickey solemnly, “suspicioning a thing is the fine art of detective work.”

  Ballade of Baker Street

  Carolyn Wells

  Carolyn Wells (1869-1942) was a prolific author and poet, producing more than 170 titles over four decades, including 75 mystery and detective stories. Her ode to 221B appeared in a special Sherlock Holmes edition of Collier’s on Aug. 15 that included several articles on Conan Doyle and Sherlock, as well as “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.” Wells also produced a number of Sherlockian pastiches that will appear in future volumes.

  I’ve followed many a devious way,

  I’ve traveled fast and traveled far;

  Beyond the night, across the day,

  By many a mountain, lake, and scar.

  ‘Neath ilex, palm, and deodar

  I’ve viewed the homes of Fame’s elite

  Ah, why does frowning Fortune bar

  Those hallowed rooms in Baker Street?

  There’s Carlyle’s house (you have to pay),

  Houses of Shakespeare, Poe, Legare;

  There’s Landor’s at Fiesole,

  And Some One’s Villa at Dinard.

  Nero’s and Borgias’ houses jar,

  Though Baedekers their charms repeat;

  They should note with a double star

  Those hallowed rooms in Baker Street.

  My eager quest I would not stay

  For jeweled house of Alnaschar,

  Diog
enes’ quaint tub of gray—

  Historic Bough of old Omar—

  Peterhof of the Russian Czar—

  These were to me no special treat,

  Could I but reach, by cab or car,

  Those hallowed rooms in Baker Street.

  L’envoi

  Sherlock! My fondest wishes are

  That on a day I yet may greet,

  Haply in some far avatar,

  Those hallowed rooms in Baker Street.

  By a Hair

  Jean Giraudoux

  Translation by Kai-Ho Mah

  An affair, a suspicious husband, a clue found in a strand of blonde hair: this thoroughly Parisian tale exhibits both wit and charm. Its author, Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944) was a novelist, dramatist, and playwright, probably most popularly known for The Madwoman of Chaillot, which in 1969 was made into both a Broadway musical starring Angela Lansbury and a movie starring Katharine Hepburn.

  Giraudoux began his career as a journalist, and in 1908 became co-literary editor of the Paris newspaper Le Natin. He wrote numerous short stories for the paper, including this one that appeared in Nov. 9, under the double pen name Jean Cordelier and Ch. Aivrard.

  “By a Hair” was translated by Kai-Ho Mah for the Baker Street Journal and reprinted with their kind permission.

  I had just left the arms of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes when, as luck would have it, I happened on her husband.

  “Well, good day!” said the eminent detective. “You’ll have dinner with me? Haven’t seen you for centuries!”

  Some of my emotion showed on my face. Sherlock smiled shrewdly. “I see what’s up,” he said; “Monsieur is on his way to see a mistress.”

  If I said no, I’d seem secretive. If I said yes, I’d seem to be avoiding him. I replied, therefore, perhaps a little hastily, that the woman in question could quite well wait; that, if I didn’t arrive at eight o’clock, it would be at nine; and that, moreover, if she didn’t like it, I’d not go back at all.

  Sherlock, by way of reply, put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said: “Don’t talk nonsense, dear fellow. I laid a trap for you. You’re just coming from a rendezvous.”

  A shudder went through my body and came out through my hair, which stood on end. Luckily he added: “But that’s enough joking. Let’s go to the restaurant. Sorry we can’t go to my place, but they’re not expecting me. It’s the maid’s day off.”

  I thought I was saved. My friend was pondering over his soup, but I set him to musing about the case of a professional pickpocket and pimp. Suddenly, he kicked my ankle lightly.

  “There’s the proof.” He took up the attack again. “The undeniable proof, the irrefutable proof,” he explained, “that you’ve indeed come from a rendezvous: Your boots are only half buttoned up again. Either you were caught in the act, an inadmissible hypothesis, for a woman’s hand tied your necktie at leisure; or your mistress comes from a family that doesn’t use a buttonhook, an English family, for example.”

  I affected a smile. “Every woman,” I hinted, “has hairpins. A hairpin substitutes quite favourably for a buttonhook.”

  “Your mistress doesn’t have any,” he said nonchalantly. “Perhaps you don’t know that certain English women have formed a league against hairpins. Besides, without going so far for an explanation, women who wear wigs don’t use them. How well I know. My wife is one of them.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  Clearly, he was having a good time torturing me. Furthermore, the imbecile had seated me with my back to the window, and a draught was coming in which penetrated to my very marrow. I sneezed. In getting out my handkerchief, I pulled out and dropped a second one, edged with lace, a little bigger than a leaf and a little smaller than my hand. Sherlock put it on the table, and lost himself again in contemplation.

  “It’s a woman’s handkerchief,” he declared at last.

  Then he smiled. “Simpleton,” he said. “You let yourself be betrayed by a handkerchief. Since Iago and Othello, this sort of accessory belongs only in operettas. But I don’t wish to be indiscreet. You’ll allow me to examine it?”

  “You may,” I stammered like a fool. “It’s clean.”

  I whistled under my breath to regain my composure. Then, since it was obvious that that was why I was whistling, I stopped. It was so quiet one could have heard a fly buzz, but the wretched creatures, intimidated, took care not to do so. My heart, beating full speed, roared amidst this silence like a motor. Sherlock drank a finger of claret, then a second finger, and then put down one of his own, the index, on the handkerchief.

  “She’s the wife of someone who is distrustful and who is shrewd,” he said. “It has no initials.”

  In relief, I swallowed two large glasses of water. Sherlock sniffed the handkerchief and drew it delicately up to my nose. “What does it smell of?” he asked.

  It smelled of “Congo” so frightfully that one could take it for squab, the gamy snipe aged for two weeks, that they served us. Indeed, it was the evening hunting season opened.

  “What it smells of?” I murmured.

  Fortunately, Sherlock doesn’t listen to his interlocutors. He tosses out questions to which he is already formulating the answers. “To me,” he reasoned, “it does not smell of anything. It is therefore a perfume to which I am accustomed—Congo, for example, my wife’s perfume.”

  Those who have never been caught in a pile-driver or put through the rolling mill can never conceive what a vise was crushing my heart. I leaned over my plate and to find my appetite, in one of those silences which double the height of the column of air weighing down on our shoulders.

  Sherlock continued to stare at me. “A hair,” he said.

  I leaned towards his plate. “It’s not a hair,” I said. “A bit of leek, no doubt.”

  Without answering, he got up, stretched out his hand towards me, and presented to me, between his thumb and index finger, after having plucked it from the collar of my overcoat, a golden hair, silky, pliant, in short, one of those hairs which are so becoming on the shoulder of the lover when the head of the mistress is still at one end.

  “Then what’s that?”

  “That,” I said in a tone that I wanted to seem indifferent, but which in spite of myself sounded provocative, “you said so yourself, is a hair!”

  He placed it on the white tablecloth, took advantage of the opportunity afforded me by the draught and the reverie of my executioner to direct a sneeze in the direction of the hair, which rose up, undulating like a tail without, however—the blasted thing—falling off the table.

  “Sneeze again,” commanded Sherlock Holmes, who had obviously seen through my stratagem.

  I thought it was a poor joke. “If you’re so keen on my sneezing,” I protested, “sneeze yourself.”

  He sneezed. The hair rose up, undulated—(as above).

  “It’s indeed a hair from a wig,” he concluded. “The root clings.”

  The hair had fallen down again crosswise and separated us like a cadaver. It seemed to me still longer dead than living.

  Sherlock emptied his glass and took hold of it as though it were a magnifying glass, the more abominable of him for doing so, despite my efforts to pour him a glass of chablis. “It’s my wife’s hair,” he said.

  I concealed my terror under the veil of amiable jesting. “Well, well,” I bandied, “Madame Holmes is pretty. You flatter me.”

  He looked at me with an air of commiseration. “Poor friend,” he said, “an Irish girl who has hung about all the pubs.”

  Death was better than uncertainty. I don’t like to die slowly—especially in the presence of a stupid waiter who is listening to you while he serves you. I casually dismissed the intruder. “And you,” I said, getting up and staring at Sherlock, “explain yourself.”

  That was taking the bull by the horns, but I’d have done even more.

  My adversary, however, persisted in his deferential irony. “In two words,” he said. “You leave a rendezvo
us, you’re ruffled at the sight of me; therefore it’s to your interest that I not know the lady who lavishes her favours on you. Your boots are undone, therefore—you didn’t re-button them. It’s the day my maid goes away and leaves my wife alone. You pull out a handkerchief that belongs to my wife. I find on your shoulders a hair from her most beautiful wig. Therefore—”

  I took a quick look around. Time passed in inverse ratio to the beating of my heart.

  “Therefore,” continued Sherlock, who was still staring at me with eyes of a boa about to swallow an ox, “therefore—draw your own conclusions.”

  I concluded by leaning back in my chair and caressing feverishly the grip of my revolver, an excellent twelve-shot Browning. What stupidity never to load it!

  “Therefore,” said Sherlock coldly, “confess it, my poor friend; I don’t hold it against you. You are—the lover of my maid!”

  “Waiter,” I shouted. “Where the devil are you hiding? I’ve been calling you for an hour! Bring some champagne!”

  Sherlock Holmes in Perth: The Case of the Straw-Street Boarding-House

  “Watson’s Under-study”

  This story, which appeared in the Nov. 14 edition of the Western Mail of Perth, Australia, plays off a subject familiar to many of its readers: the problems of living in a boarding house, where strangers rent rooms by the day, week, or year, with food and other services provided by a landlady. Whatever troubles they encounter on Straw Street, the residents never had to deal with all-night chemical experiments and the occasional target practice.

  (The following story is intended not as a parody, or a burlesque of Sir A. Conan Doyle’s well-known stories, but as a “sincere flattery”—in other words, a very humble imitation.)

  “Evidently reporters,” said Sherlock Holmes, “three of them. I fear, my dear Watson, that, thanks to your well-meant but indiscreet attentions, my fame has preceded me, and I am not to be allowed to land. Yes, they are going to intercept us.”